Aliens vs Predator

Demo now on Marketplace, 8-player deathmatch, just the one map to choose from. You have the option to invite friends, didn't have any problems getting games which is weird because I read pretty much everywhere that match-making was fucked.

In any case, it has bigger problems. Like the balance.

Holy shit does the balance need sorting out. I played a few games last night and in every single one, an alien won. In fact, the top three was pretty much consistently alien, bar the odd marine making top three as well. Alien's abilities are light attack, heavy attack, instant kill from behind/on stunned opponents, ability to walk on walls, focus (which lets you see enemies through walls). All you really need is instant kill. You can run around, mash light attack and X whenever someone gets close, job done. You can also instant kill from heavy attacks if you're above someone - given you can run along ceilings and the lighting is incredibly dark, this happens fairly often. So basically, alien is the equivalent of those scrubs who run around in Modern Warfare 2 with Commando, Lightweight, Marathon and Tactical Knife - racks up the kills incredibly quickly, very little anyone can do about it providing you don't charge head on from far away.

Marine is... well, marine. A bit like playing a standard FPS. Stupidly vulnerable when out in the open, stupidly invulnerable when backed into a corner as the assault rifle tears aliens, predators and other marines to shreds (stupidly, free-for-all deathmatch pits you against your own side too, which I think goes against the ethos of the series a bit?). Bit of a vanilla option but can hold its own against alien, if they decide to just camp in the corner. Which is dull. But hey ho.

Predator is the biggest mystery. The idea is that you pick up weapons around the arena including the spear and laser cannon (plus some weird mine thing) and that's how you do damage. But Predator is too slow and gets torn to shreds by aliens fairly frequently, the pace isn't really slow enough to allow for Predator to stock up in the way Rebellion intended. Predator can cloak and sprint away from danger but that means in a free-for-all deathmatch, Predator spends most of it shitting himself and running away. And aliens can still see him using focus anyway.

In addition to that, the controls are super clunky, it lacks polish (first game that came to mind when playing it was Prey) and it's just... a disappointment. The concept is still pretty cool and it was good fun playing this with friends until the novelty wore off but yeah, the single player had better be fucking rocking after this because the multiplayer is pretty damn lame.

Fairytale Fights

Picked it up at GAME for £17 brand new, even though it's just come out. Even better, my GAME card had £50 on it rather than the £1 it was supposed to have. So the last time I went to GAME, back for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2's release, the till girl fucked up and put £50 on my GAME card zomg lololol etc. So already, Fairytale Fights is a win in my book.

Anyway, the game itself is a very strange hybrid of things. It's part platformer, part hack 'n slash, part loot. You run along fairly linear levels (think 3D side-scrolling beat-'em-up) using the right analogue stick to attack whatever's in your path (think Too Human. Yes, I know.)

Enemies spill coins and weapons when they die, which you grab and move onto the next batch of enemies. There are the odd bits of platforming thrown in too, such as bladesaws you have to jump past and the like, nothing too challenging but there to break up the hack 'n slashing. There are boss fights too - fought a giant beaver but the achievements suggest boss fights against Pinocchio, the seven dwarves, etc.

It has clearly been made with multiplayer in mind. There are four characters introduced at the start - Little Red Riding Hood, The Emperor (Emperor's New Clothes), Little Red Riding Hood and Jack (Jack and the Beanstalk), so I'm guessing 4-player online co-op. When you die, there's a small countdown timer on a grave, so there aren't any interruptions. I'll try online later.

The best thing about it is the dark humour of it all. It's based on fairytales but redone with comic book violence. The first enemies you fight are lumberjacks and you can grab their axes and then slice them in half with the axes, before sliding around in the pool of blood, I kid you not. No idea if the novelty of hey-look-little-red-riding-hood-slicing-people-up! will sustain itself over the course of a full game but for £17 - sorry, for free, thanks GAME - it seems decent enough.

Will try online co-op and update this post later.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

As requested, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 impressions. It's the same premise as the first game - team of four, switch between any of them at any time, run around hitting things, light attack, heavy attack, COMBINATIONS OF THE TWO HOLY SHIT, throw and a block button that no-one ever uses because you're too busy pressing heavy attack, heavy attack, heavy attack and lightattacklightattacklightattack if they dare to start blocking.

THE SHIT STUFF
Now, I quite liked the first one. It was a button basher that had enough RPG elements thrown at it to make it enticing. Each character had ten special moves to be levelled up but you could only use three at a time, while they could be levelled up to level 99 which took ages. In addition to that, they had three unlockable alternative outfits which had different attributes and equipment you could use. It attached MMO grinding and rewards to a fairly robust fighting system - dress it in Marvel clothing and hey, job done.

MUA2 gets rid of all that. You now have a set moveslist that can't be altered, there's only one alternative costume which has no effect on your character and you max out your characters levels after two playthroughs. There are less characters than MUA and the game is about half as long.

The reason is probably that the graphics are much nicer and each character model has to be built from the ground up and is made of 10,000,000 polygons and uses dynamic cross bimp bump bomp mapping techniques or whatever but all I care about is 1) less characters than MUA and 2) shit characters like Iron Fist have been included over Colossus. But the characters thing is a bigger problem than that because you also run into and fight with/alongside so many characters you can't play as, it starts to take the piss after a while - Colossus, Bullseye, Electro, Shocker, Lady Deathstrike, War Machine, Cable, Spider-Woman, Prodigy, etc. The first MUA was guilty of this too (Bullseye, Mandarin, Mysterio, etc) but there's less stuff here to pull your attention away from the lack of content. It feels like Activision is bending you over for the DLC mid-game. It's pretty shit.

The main gimmick is that each duo of characters has a Fusion Attack but they don't really. ALL Fusion Attacks fall into three types regardless of who you're using - Targeted, Clearing and Radial and there are a lot of recycled animations shared amongst them too. It's really cool when it works as promised and you stumble onto a truly unique animation - Storm summons a guided cyclone and Gambit throws cards into it, which the cyclone then spits out. Yet most of the time, it's Spider-Man swinging a rock and Green Goblin/Mr Fantastic/Human Torch/whoever throwing projectiles at it, or something similar. On top of that, in true videogame fashion, you tend to save them as budget smart bombs for the boss, so you don't actually see them all that often anyway. Bit of a waste.

There are also micro-achievements in-game that unlock further team boosts. This is the only grinding element of the game and it works well enough to sustain interest once novelty of Fusion Attack and physics wears off.

THE GOOD STUFF
The fighting system is limited by the lack of special moves but overall, it's better than MUA. There's a physics system in place now, so everything feels interactive - chunks of environment fly around and knock enemies down when you blow something up, and that makes things a lot more interesting. It means a lot of the special moves pack more punch - Storm's tornados blow away pretty much everything close to it while just causing gentle pushback to distant objects, Hulk's ground smash will destroy enemies and scenery and so on. It's a chaotic system because of the amount of enemies and debris on screen but it's not a chaos you feel that you lose control over. It's quite good fun.

It also looks much nicer. The levels aren't as flat as MUA and the physics system means pretty much everything blows up. It feels a lot more dynamic and fun working your way through levels now. The boss battles are also pretty good (definitely an upgrade over MUA as there is more variety to them now) and the story is a definite improvement, being based on the Civil War storyline from the comics. There are also two very different and distinct pathways through the game, which makes it worth playing through a second time.

The character balance is also better, if still flawed. Deadpool and Mr Fantastic ruled the first MUA, now its Thor and Nick Fury cleaning up. But there are plenty of secondary characters who can also be used at the highest difficulty - Songbird, Hulk, The Thing, Green Goblin.

In co-op, the Fusion Attack system shines more than it does in single player because you have to co-ordinate with everyone else on your team. When you call for a Fusion Attack, you need your team-mate to press a button to complete it but you need the right team-mate so you have the right attack, hence the need for co-ordination. It works better when playing with friends, for this reason.

The Mission Simulator and Trivia Quizzes have returned too, plus there are unique conversations within the various HQ sites, so there's still some extra stuff to goof around with outside of the main game. Not an upgrade over the first MUA or anything but given the character roster has slimmed down to make way for the graphics, it's good that some stuff has survived the new diet.

BETTER THAN THE FIRST ONE?
Personally, I don't think so. It's probably more accessible and has a lighter approach to the button-bashing gameplay but it doesn't have the depth of the special moves to play around with, nor the grinding to keep a carrot dangled in front of your face. But what it really comes down to is that you feel like a good chunk of this has been held back for DLC and while you can accuse some other games of the same thing, it feels a lot more transparent here. It's a fun game and definitely a good way to kill a weekend, just the bitter bent-over-for-the-DLC aftertaste is quite strong.

PSP recommendations

Long story short - going on holiday soon, will be needing a (some?) PSP game to play. Got Every Extend Extra, Lumines II and Gunpey so I'm sorted for short, quick bursts of gaming.

I'm interested in picking up a RPG. I got Valkyrie Profile Lenneth but 2-3 hours in, just couldn't get into it. I'm looking for an RPG that's fairly easy to get into, that'll be the main criteria. I'm looking at Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea and Crisis Core. Have any of guys played these games? How do they compare against each other? Any problems with long loading times or anything like that?

And finally, has anyone tried Tomb Raider: Anniversary on PSP? Would like to know how the controls hold up on that. Cheers guys.

Fighting game tournament in Birmingham

Hey guys, just thought I'd post up and let you know about the Legends Tournament in Omega Sektor on the 29th June:



http://www.neoempire.com/forum/showthread....96014#post96014
http://www.electronicdojo.co.uk/legends/

The games are Dead Or Alive 4, Virtua Fighter 5, Soul Calibur III and Tekken 5: DR. Winner of each gets their name put on a reserve list for a copy of Soul Calibur IV. I'm definitely going up for VF5 and DOA4 (lol), two other London VF5 players at the very least will be going (Howl and ZeroEx). Some of the Manchester heads are thinking of going too.

Would be cool to see some of GHZ there! Yes Singho, I am looking at YOU!